still more on bug

[John Heim]

<speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 2:00 PM
Subject: Re: still more on bug


> John Heim wrote
> | Well, admittedly, we have a problem down the road regarding serial
> | hardware synths. But it will be years before serial ports go away
> | entirely. Every Dell server class machine still comes with at least
> | one serial port. I don't know about other server manufacturers but I
> | would guess they're the same. In fact, even dell small footprint
> | desktops still have serial ports. So I think it will be some time
> | before server class machines don't come with serial ports. And even
> | after serial ports become obsolete, speakup won't be obsolete, it
> | will just have to start supporting USB synths.
>
> You say just like it's easy to fix speakup to do what you want it to do. 
> It's not that easy in fat to fix the code, hell i'd fix it if i could my 
> husband would fix it if he could probably, but it's not that easy.
>

First of all, I didn't say it was going to be easy. But have you tried?  Are 
you an experienced C coder?  Are you saying you tried and found it couldn't 
be done?

> I've got a couple serial synths laying around but the fact is that i've 
> not had a computer with a serial port since 2007 so yep, guess they're out 
> of date. Last time i tried ordering a computer i couldn't get del or hp to 
> add them even though i wanted them.

I am typing this on a Dell Optiplex 760 with a serial port.  We have about 
100 760s all with serial ports. We have another 40 small footprint 760s in 
our student labs all with serial ports.  We have about a dozen newer Dell 
desktops and they all have serial ports. I don't know how you managed to 
order a Dell w/o a serial port but its not that hard to get one with it.

And those are just desktops. Of course, every one of our servers has a 
serial port.  We have 3 mail servers, 2 DNS servers, 3 web servers, and 6 
machines in our VMware cluster. All have serial ports.
I just built myself a machine for home with parts ordered from newegg. The 
mobo didn't have an external serial port but it does have a serial port 
header. So then it was just a matter of attaching the appropriate cable. So 
even a machine I built myself has a serial port.

Look, I'm not saying you don't come across machines w/o serial ports. But 
holy cow, I have certainly never had any trouble finding machines with 
serial ports. Laptops & apples... You're in trouble there.